The Unit for Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology, History and Legacy Data serves as the umbrella for research projects focused on uncovering, contextualizing, and digitally preserving the archaeological and historical record of the Eastern Mediterranean. Bringing together interdisciplinary expertise and innovative methodologies, the projects explore imperial, regional and local portrait culture, re-examine forgotten excavation histories, and build digital infrastructures for long-term access to heritage data.
2026
Andrade, N. & Raja, R. 2026. ‘Introduction: Invisible Labour and Ancient Economy’, in N. Andrade and R. Raja (eds.) Invisible Labour in Antiquity. Visualizing Obscure Work in the Ancient Mediterranean and West Asia, The Archaeology and History of Western Asia 1 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 15-34.
Andrade, N. & Raja, R. 2026. Invisible Labour in Antiquity. Visualizing Obscure Work in the Ancient Mediterranean and West Asia, The Archaeology and History of Western Asia 1 (Turnhout: Brepols).
Bobou, O., Bucci, I. & Raja, R. (2026). Nurturing the Elite: Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography, Studies in Palmyrene Archaeology and History 13 (Turnhout: Brepols).
Bobou, O., Bucci, I., & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Standing on Their Own: A Contextual Analysis of Single and Double Portraits of Children on Palmyrene Funerary Stelai’, Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie, 17: 144-220. https://doi.org/10.34780/tv749a59
Bobou, O., Bucci, I. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Discovering Denmark: From prehistoric burials to Viking Age power architecture and beyond’, Current World Archaeology, 136: 46-51.
Bobou, O., Bucci, I., English, R. S. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Monuments of kingship. Power, memory, and belief at Jelling’, Current World Archaeology, 137: 38-42.
Bobou, O. Calomino, D., Lenghan, J., & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Putting Portraits in the Big Picture: Otacilia Severa and Faustina the Elder in Palmyra’, in R. Raja (ed.), Portraying the Individual in the Roman East. Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (1st–4th Centuries AD), Studies in Classical Archaeology 18 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 85-112.
Bobou, O. and Dickenson, C. (2026). ‘The Portrait Statues from the Artemision at Messene — Expressing Identity and Representing Power', in R. Raja (ed.), Portraying the Individual in the Roman East. Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (1st–4th Centuries AD), Studies in Classical Archaeology 18 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 187-206.
Bobou, O. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Catastrophes and Resilience: The Archaeology of Crises at Palmyra, 150–272’, in Catastrophes in Context. Disaster and Response in the Roman and Early Byzantine World, edited by R. Raja and A. Wilson (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 131-152.
Bobou, O. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Women and their Clothing Styles in Sacred Spaces. The Case of Palmyra’, in G. Pedrucci, F. Fulminante, and M. Seifert (eds), Inside Out: Gender and Ageing Agency in Urban and Non-urban Religious Spaces in Antiquity (Brepols: Turnhout), 187-204.
Bobou, O. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘How to Lose a City: Palmyra, Tadmor, and Western Travellers from the Eighteenth Century Onwards’, Journal of Urban Archaeology13: 99-116.
Bobou, O. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘The Long Roots of Middle Islamic Tadmor: Urban Resilience and Water Management’, Journal of Urban Archaeology 13: 15-30.
Bobou, O. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘From One City to Another: Collecting Palmyra in Copenhagen’, Journal of Urban Archaeology 13: 49-90.
English, R. S. & Steding, J. (2026). ‘Beyond the luxurious: Tracing the Late Antique ivory trade’, Current World Archaeology, 137: 32-37.Fernandéz-Götz, M. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Urbicide: Killing the City’, Current World Archaeology, 136: 58-59.
Fernandéz-Götz, M. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Pilgrimage Cities’, Current World Archaeology, 137: 56-57.
Furlan, G. (2026). ‘Revising the concepts of systemic context and archaeological context: a proposal’, Archaeological Dialogues, First View: 1-12. (OA)
Intagliata, E. E. (2025). ‘The ›Mosaic Field‹ at Eski K˘ahta, Adiyaman Province’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, 67: 133-47. (published in Feb. 2026 but with a 2025 publication date)
Nørskov, V. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Communicating classical antiquity: The making of a Museum of Ancient Art’, Current World Archaeology, 135: 40-43.
Raja, R. (ed.). (2026). Portraying the Individual in the Roman East. Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (1st–4th Centuries AD), Studies in Classical Archaeology 18 (Turnhout: Brepols).
Raja, R. (2026). ‘Portraying the Individual in the Roman East: Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (1st–4th Centuries AD)’, in R. Raja (ed.), Portraying the Individual in the Roman East. Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (1st–4th Centuries AD), Studies in Classical Archaeology 18 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 1-8.
Raja, R. (2026). ‘Locally Crafted Empires: The Case of the Palmyrene Portrait Habit and the Legacy of Greek Art’, in R. Raja (ed.), Portraying the Individual in the Roman East. Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (1st–4th Centuries AD), Studies in Classical Archaeology 18 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 59-84.
Rubina, R. (2026). ‘Looking in the Wrong Direction. The Search for Late Antique Stylistic Forerunners in Palmyrene Art’, Journal of Eastern Christian Art, 14(2025): 37-52. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2143/ECA.14.0.3295405
Raja, R. (2026). ‘(Re)writing Roman Britain’, in Communities, Connectivity and Complexity in Roman Britain. New archaeological agendas, edited by Martin Pitts, Penny Coombe, Eleri Cousins, Andrew Gardner, and Lisa Lodwick† (Oxford: BAR), 225-228.
Raja, R. & Sindbæk, S. M. (2026). ‘Urban Jungles’, Current World Archaeology, 135: 58-59.
Raja, R. & Sindbæk, S. M. (2026). ‘Handing over the Torch: Stepping Up and Stepping Down’, Journal of Urban Archaeology 13: 13-14.
Raja, R. and Wilson, A. (eds) (2026). Catastrophes in Context. Disaster and Response in the Roman and Early Byzantine World (Turnhout: Brepols).
Raja, R. and Wilson, A. (2026). ‘Catastrophe and Response in the Ancient World’, in Catastrophes in Context. Disaster and Response in the Roman and Early Byzantine World, edited by R. Raja and A. Wilson (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 1-22.
Seland, E. H. (2026). Long-distance Trade in the Ancient World. A Network History (S.l.: Palgrave Macmillan). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-90855-2
Steding, J., Raja, R. Romanowska, I. & Yon, J.-B. (2026). ‘Reconsidering Three Hundred Years of Epigraphic Habit in Palmyra (Syria) in Light of a Full Quantifcation Approach’, Journal of Urban Archaeology 13: 31-48.
Steding J., Romanowska, I., Yon, J-B. & Raja, R. (2026). ‘Public Inscriptions from the City of Palmyra, Syria (1–273 CE)’, Journal of Open Archaeology Data, 14.6: 1–6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/joad.189
2025
Blömer, Michael, Olympia Bobou, Eleanor Q. Neil, and Rubina Raja. 2025. “From ‘Secondary’ City to Primary Focus: A Historiographical Approach to the Urbanity of Seleucia in Pieria.” Journal of Urban Archaeology 12: 229–243. doi.org/10.1484/J.JUA.5.151435
Bobou, Olympia, and Rubina Raja. 2025. “Cities ‘Lost’ and ‘Found’: The Impact of Western Research on Ancient Sites in the Perception of Their Urbanism.” Journal of Urban Archaeology 12: 141–148. doi.org/10.1484/J.JUA.5.151430.
Bobou, Olympia, and Rubina Raja. 2025. “Archival Palimpsests: Investigating the History of Harald Ingholt’s Archive of Palmyrene Sculptures.” In Turning the Page: Archaeological Archives and Entangled Knowledge, ed. by Olympia Bobou, Rubina Raja, and Maria Stamatopoulou, Archive Archaeology 6 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 405- 428.
Bobou, Olympia, and Rubina Raja. 2025. “From Tadmor to Palmyra, 1923–1929: The (Re-) creation of an Ancient City.” Journal of Urban Archaeology 12: 215–228. doi.org/10.1484/J.JUA.5.151434.
Bobou, Olympia, Miriam Kühn, and Rubina Raja. 2025. “Lost Cities in the Near East: Reassembling Knowledge through Archival Research and Excavation Documentation.” Journal of Urban Archaeology 12: 177–200.
Bobou, Olympia, Filiz Tütüncü Çağlar, Miriam Kühn, Eleanor Q. Neil, and Rubina Raja. 2025. “Shelving Urban Excavations: Revisiting Ottoman and Mandate Period Archives in the Near East.” Journal of Urban Archaeology 12: 149–176. doi.org/10.1484/J.JUA.5.151431.
Bobou, Olympia, and Rubina Raja, eds.2025. Journal of Urban Archaeology 12. Special section on “Lost Cities and Legacy Data.” Turnhout: Brepols. Kühn, Miriam. 2025. “Beyond the Finds: Digitising Ctesiphon’s Photographic Archive for Research and Plus.” in Living the Past Archaeological Research and Cultural Heritage Strategies in the Middle East and Beyond. Studies in Honour of Ute Franke, ed. by Karin Bartl, Thomas Urban, and Stefan Weber (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz), pp. 203–218.
Kühn, Miriam. 2025. “Revisiting Herzfeld’s Letters and Diaries from the Samarra Excavation 1911–1913.” in Turning the Page: Archaeological Archives and Entangled Cultural Knowledge, ed. by Olympia Bobou, Maria Stamatopoulou, and Rubina Raja, ARC, 6 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 57–87.
Raja, Rubina. 2025. “The Organization of Archaeological Fieldwork and Selective Publication of Findings as Appropriation of Knowledge: Observations on the 1931 Spring Campaign in Gerasa.” Journal of Urban Archaeology 12: 245–268. doi.org/10.1484/J.JUA.5.151436.
Raja, Rubina. 2025. “In the Field and through the Archives. The 1928 American-British Campaign in Gerasa and the Excavation of the Church of St Theodore.” In Turning the Page: Archaeological Archives and Entangled Knowledge, ed. by Olympia Bobou, Rubina Raja, and Maria Stamatopoulou, Archive Archaeology 6 (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 105-187.
